David Kerr and Jay Stowsky married at City Hall Aug. 14, with their adopted children, Shayla, 6, and Jaden, 3, in attendance.

Photo: Nicolas Smith

David Kerr and Jay Stowsky married at City Hall Aug. 14, with their...

Image 2 of 3

David Kerr and Jay Stowsky married at City Hall Aug. 14, then had a September "Making it Legal" reception at Great Stoneface Park in Berkeley that featured a cake-cutting ceremony that celebrated their adopted children, Shayla, now 6, and Jaden, now 3.

Photo: Gabriel Harber

David Kerr and Jay Stowsky married at City Hall Aug. 14, then had a...

Image 3 of 3

David Kerr and Jay Stowsky married at City Hall Aug. 14, then had a September "Making it Legal" reception at Great Stoneface Park in Berkeley that featured a cake-cutting ceremony that celebrated their adopted children, Shayla, now 6, and Jaden, now 3.

Photo: Gabriel Harber

David Kerr and Jay Stowsky married at City Hall Aug. 14, then had a...

Back in 2009, David Kerr was on a mission that sometimes felt of the needle-in-a-haystack variety: a gay man, middle-aged, he was searching for a partner who wanted to start a family. Scouring dating sites, he checked out every man within 100 miles who mentioned parenting in his profile. Success was scant.

But then he stumbled upon Jay Stowsky, whose profile talked about his political career - he was an economic adviser in the first Clinton administration - but also of his love of children. Kerr wrote immediately and arranged a dinner date.

And both admit that first date was awkward.

"When Jay is nervous, he bounces," said Kerr, 49, a Web designer and business communications consultant in Berkeley. In the couple's light-filled modern Berkeley hills home, he stands and charmingly demonstrates his husband's pogo-sticking behavior. Both men laugh.

"I was out of dating practice," said Stowsky, now the senior assistant dean for instruction at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. Stowsky, a few years out of a long-term relationship, had been living a single life, dating, but nothing serious. But he'd come to the end of that road; it was time for something meaningful.

Right away it was clear to both that something more than a casual hookup was on the table. The awkwardness eased as they talked about their love of kids - each had fostered deep relationships with the children of friends, and both were committed godparents.

They also discovered they'd both been graduate students at UC Berkeley at exactly the same time. In fact, they'd been at the same parties, though they couldn't remember meeting. Stowsky earned a doctorate in city and regional planning from Berkeley, after receiving a master's degree in public policy from Harvard. Kerr received a master's degree in rhetoric from Berkeley, after graduating from Trinity University in San Antonio.

After dinner, they walked for several hours. By the time Kerr headed to his Potrero Hill cottage, both had inklings of a life they might make with each other. They dated, dated some more, and traveled together. Within three months, Kerr spoke about living together.

"We had a good thing," said Kerr, who "knew" before Stowsky.

Stowsky was hesitant at first, but by month five the two were selling their homes and house hunting for a family-size home in the Berkeley hills. At just over a year into the relationship, they moved in together.

Then they set about building a family. In 2011, they entered the training for foster parenting. Over the next year, they weathered the ups and downs of the foster system while waiting for the right match. There were moments they thought it might never happen. But in April 2012, the call came. Within 30 days they were sharing their home with Shayla, now 6, and entering first grade, and Jaden, now 3.

"It was perfect - and also the hardest thing I've ever done," said Kerr, who said the tests of instant parenthood were vast. "We learned a lot about each other in those first months with the kids."

In June, as the men were making plans for a September adoption party for their children, the ruling overturning the Defense of Marriage Act set them to add on "a shotgun wedding." On Aug. 14, the couple married at City Hall in San Francisco with Gabriel Breitzke-Rivera, a deputy marriage commissioner, officiating.

This month, the family hosted a Making it Legal party celebrating all the legal proceedings that had lined up to make their family. The cake topper featured two grooms and their two children. "The kids know we are a family," said Stowsky. "They thought the marriage was like David and I adopting each other."

"I never thought this could happen in my lifetime," said Kerr, in a rare moment of rest before running to pick up the kids at school. "I'm flabbergasted; it's almost surreal."